Chapter 6
Aida
In the corner of my production company’s spacious and achingly hip East London converted warehouse offices, there’s a small room that makes me happy. My production team and I have named it the Paradise Room.
I deal mainly in information. My brain is obsessed with joining the dots until I see the patterns.
It’s its own kind of creativity, and it is, of course, storytelling.
Because, despite my reliance on facts as the foundations of my reporting, I can’t kid myself that the narratives I present are anything other than just that. Narratives.
If words are my paintbrushes, then the faces of the people I meet are my canvases, and that’s as true for a terror attack survivor as it is for a politician.
This is all to say I don’t deal in actual pictures very often.
And, while I see beauty in life, my job is more often concerned with discussing the darkness.
So it’s with genuine pleasure that I stand in front of the so-called Paradise Wall in the Paradise Room, arms crossed and fingers curved around opposite elbows as I take it in.
The team at Creatrix Productions has added a few details since I was here last week, and the cohesive whole of this giant collage does what I needed it to do since my shit show of a meeting at Alchemy yesterday and get my head back in the fucking game.
This is how my programme whispers to me in my head.
Especially the second episode, Paradise Found, which will be the racier, more hopeful, more celebratory of the two.
Carnal accents of crimson and maroon and blood red amid tasteful black-and-white photos of beautiful people getting it on.
Black lace lingerie and intricate eye masks are pinned to the cork-board, too, as are PR shots of Alchemy’s interior and exterior… and ones of me and Cal.
I try not to linger on those too much, because he’s grinning and gorgeous in his headshot, and I now possess the unfortunate knowledge that he’s even more glorious in the flesh.
Fuck my life.
A production company of my own may lie somewhere in my future, but for this project I’m outsourcing to the best. Creatrix is the brainchild of two female founders, and, by a mix of accident and design, the senior members of the Paradise team are female, too.
There’s Cate, the show’s Executive Producer.
It was she who believed in my fledgling vision enough to take me and my show on, and she who closed the deal with Azure.
She’s one of those rare people who makes combining details with big-picture genius look easy.
She’ll take a step back now that the show is in production, but she’s here today.
Then there’s our director, Lizzy, whose creative vision will inform the final product, just as it’s informed the wall I’m staring at. If this brain dump is any reflection of how the finished article will be, then I approve.
Our producer, Darika, is female, too, which works well for me, because her role will undoubtedly involve coordinating “stuff” at Alchemy—stuff I’ll probably feel more comfortable liaising with a woman about.
There’s a whole team at Azure on this, too, from their commissioners to their marketing people. And when you have this many people on a project, let me tell you it makes for a lot of agendas.
Most align with mine; some don’t—or won’t, by the time this process ends. The audience for this programme certainly isn’t the only stakeholder here.
And, just in case I’m not already feeling the pressure from a million directions, least of all from myself, we have Mara.
Mara is my newish publicist. I hired her in haste earlier this year at the insistence of a good friend of mine: the skincare entrepreneur and former TV presenter, Honor Chapman.
Mara has form in helping high profile women navigate the public trauma of having shitty husbands, you see.
When Honor’s movie star ex-husband’s cheating ways were dominating the tabloids, Mara helped her turn things around.
She’s also been by the side of Oscar-winning actor Elle Hart for years, since before Elle’s ex dumped her on Twitter (he came crawling back five years later after doing a lot of work on himself).
So her résumé is flawless, mainly because she’s so fucking terrifying. She rides an enormous motorcycle, wears brands so cool I’d be scared to touch them, and always has her clients’ best interests at heart.
Even when—or especially when—we don’t actually know what our best interests are. But we usually fall into line. We’re too scared not to.
Thanks to a panicked voice message from me yesterday, Mara’s invited herself to today’s meeting. It was supposed to be a quick catch-up to get everyone on the same page post my sit-down with Gen and Callum, but I suspect it may end up being a therapy session.
Suddenly, the lack of penises in the room feels extremely reassuring.
‘So, how’d it go yesterday?’ Lizzy asks with a huge smile once we’ve all taken our seats around the glossy white table.
Her vision is crystal clear, but she understands that the camera is essentially a pair of eyes observing my very personal journey, and that none of us can really have any clue what’s going to happen along the way.
All of which makes her flexible as hell and a dream to work with.
‘I bombed.’ Mara may know this, but it’s news to Lizzy and Cate. So I give it to them straight.
‘Here we go,’ Mara groans, scooting her chair back so she can put her Off White-clad feet on the table.
Cate shoots her a stern look before turning back to me. ‘How bad was it?’
I straighten my shoulders. I’m not in the habit of making excuses for myself. Years of live reporting have taught me to own my fuckups.
‘I froze, I guess. I sat down with Gen and this super-hot guy who I’m supposed to be fucking sometime soon, and I totally lost my mojo. I gave him the worst pitch of my entire career and made Paradise sound like the driest, dullest old-lady show ever.
‘Gen had to step in and remind me, basically, that when I met her in the spring, I was full of bravado. I was all like I want great sex! Fast forward to yesterday and I could barely mention the S-word, let alone look this guy in the eye.’
Silence.
I glance around the table. Mara’s rolling her eyes at me—she’s already told me, in an animated voice message, that she thinks I’m being pathetic.
Lizzy’s processing, and I can see conflict written all over Cate’s face: sympathy warring with the knowledge of how hard she pushed on my behalf to get this off the ground.
While I approached Alchemy myself, and Gen was the one who suggested Callum, it’ll be a real pain in the ass if things don’t work well between me and the guy who’s supposed to be my sexy mentor, for want of a less horrifying term.
‘How’d you leave it?’ Cate enquires calmly. She has one of those fabulously authoritative voices that don’t need to be raised to get attention.
I sigh. ‘Callum kind of saved me, I guess. He suggested that a daytime meeting with someone I’d just met wasn’t the best format for me to feel comfortable sharing my sexual desires, so he’s taking me out—tonight. He said we needed a date and some liquor so we could get to know each other better.’
Relief floods Cate’s patrician features. ‘Excellent. That sounds very sensible. I don’t disagree with him—it was always going to be excruciating.’
‘But first impressions are that you’re attracted to him?’ Lizzy asks, pointing at the wall. We all turn to gaze appreciatively at Callum.
I swallow. ‘Yeah. Of course. I mean, that’s part of the problem. I think it all hit me yesterday, you know? Oh, hey, insanely hot young guy. Nice to meet you. Can’t wait to fuck you. And sure, let’s sit here and talk about all the ways I want that to happen. Fun!’
‘The feeling is mutual,’ Mara points out. ‘Gen told you how up for it he was when she pitched it to him.’
Oh God, it feels like I’m back at high school and my friends are whispering to a guy’s friends that I like him, and then it comes back along the grapevine that he might like me too, but it’s never a hundred percent trustworthy.
Kill me now.
‘Jesus, I don’t know,’ I protest. Sure, he seemed very interested in my legs, but this is all feeling far too real for me right now.
‘In case this focuses the mind…’ Mara says.
She pulls her feet off the table and stands with a pained sigh, like she really resents that I’ve put her in this position.
From her gorgeous, buttery Loewe backpack, she pulls an envelope that looks like it’s from a printing shop and stalks over to the cork-board.
I crane my neck, but I can’t see what she’s pinning there.
She turns with another sigh and steps aside, rapping her knuckles against the board. ‘From that to this. That is what we’re dealing with, love. And don’t you fucking forget it.
That is a paparazzi photo of my ex-husband that I recognise from the media onslaught on our family after his women kissed and told.
He was sleeping on the couch in the basement at the time.
In the shot he looks exhausted, haggard, and over one hundred years old.
It’s an unfairly unflattering photo of a still-arresting man.
Mara’s pinned him right next to Callum who, by contrast, is glowing and dripping sex appeal and looks positively lickable.
It’s official.
The woman is the devil.
But she’s my devil.
I giggle despite myself. ‘Wow, that’s harsh. Remind me never to piss you off.’
‘You won’t piss me off because you’re you.
This guy’—she jabs her fingertip at John’s face—‘betrayed your trust and fucked over the mother of his children. The very hot, very amazing mother of his children. And this guy’—she strokes Callum’s square, bearded jaw—‘wants to fuck you.
That is literally the issue here. Nothing else.
‘So you, my friend, are going to get your head back in the fucking game, and you’re going to let Sex Master McHottie take you out tonight, and you are going to pull that stick out of your vagina and think about all the lovely things he could put up there instead.
Are you with me?’